"M Rickert - The Girl Who Ate Butterflies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rickert Mary)

M. RICKERT

THE GIRL WHO ATE BUTTERFLIES

For a period in the 1980s, after One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the
Time of Cholera found widespread popularity in English, it seemed as though
every fantasy writer in North America was claiming to write magical realism. At
the time, I thought the trend just demonstrated the dangers of pigeonholing
fiction: not only was the claim of "American magical realist" inappropriate in
many circumstances, but I found that its application sometimes made me less
interested in a particular work. It was almost as if a friend had swapped his
jeans-and-t-shirt outfit for a silk cravat and ill-fitting gabardine slacks and
then expected people to look at him the same way.

But here we have a fantasy that clearly shows the influence of Marquez, a lovely
tale of sexual roles and lepidoptera. This story is M. Rickert's first published
work of fiction.

I

HER MOTHER CARVED ANGELS in the backyard. The largest was six feet tall and had
the face of her mother's first lover, killed in a car accident when they were
still in their teens. It took eighteen months to sway the purple and blue webbed
stone into wings and skin, to release the wisp of feathers from the metallic
clasp. She carved through the seasons, the easy spring, the heat of summer. In
autumn she moved closer to the garage and plugged in the space heater, and in
winter she wiped the white ash, that was what she called it, from his broad
shoulders and unformed brow and in fingerless gloves carved him with a heat that
flushed her cheeks and brightened her eyes.

The smallest angel was no larger than Lantanna's pinky and it was for the memory
of an aborted fetus. Lantanna had heard the woman whisper her request through
the closed door on a dark and moonless night. "I know I made the right
decision," she said, "but still, I feel empty. I want something to mark the
absence. A little angel for the one I sent past. Can you carve it a girl? Can
you make her face at peace?" Lantanna stood shivering in the kitchen doorway,
unnoticed by her mother who listened with a passive expression to the stranger
behind the door. "And one last thing?" whispered the voice. "As you carve will
you say a prayer, or whatever, for me. Though I'm sure I made the right choice."

Lantanna turned and walked back to bed. She shivered into her blankets and
wrapped them around herself, tight as a cocoon, and fell asleep again without
her mother even noticing she had awakened. In her home, as in her life,
Lantanna, like a shadow, was rarely noticed.

She was the sort of girl who did not know she was pretty. A pale face with the
lightest scattering of freckles on her nose and cheeks. Pale blue eyes the color
of dreams. Hair the color of corn.